Not a Holiday
by SociallyInept
Summary: X23, now called Laura by Logan and her peers, has to adjust to a new life in the mansion. But what happens when Logan disappears and several of the X kids decide to find him? A wellmeant disaster.
1. Easter Eggs

All characters belong to Marvel in some form or another. Laura's name was not stolen, that is the official name of X-23. So there.

* * *

"You know, a bunch of us are going to Prom anyway on Saturday. Are you sure you don't want to come?"

Rogue snorted. "What's the point of dancing if you can't touch anyone?" She turned back to her book.

Laura frowned from her vantage point on the stairs. Prom? Is this like holidays? She'd discovered Easter- even if she didn't quite understand what the point was- about a month ago. She'd been surprised to wake up to the smell of pastry being baked- and since it was recognizable pastry, that automatically ruled out Kitty as the chef. Not even her stomach of steel and healing factor could withstand Kitty's cooking.

Laura had slunk down the stairs behind Sam (the only one who wasn't at least nervous around her) on Easter Sunday a few weeks ago, and noticed several things right away. One: there were suspicious-looking colored eggs strategically located around the mansion. Two: as she folled Sam down the stairs, Kitty and Jubilee ran past yelling not about boys like they normally did, but about an 'Easter' and cake. And then when Sam realized she was almost right behind him and turned around, the same strange holiday glint she'd registered in the girls' eyes was in his.

"What's going on?" Laura asked him bluntly. Sam blinked.

"You don't know?"

"No. What's the deal?" she waved one potentially lethal tanned hand around. "There are little eggs everywhere."

"It's Easter," Sam shrugged. "You'll understand in a little bit."

Laura had been very confused until Sam, noticing her bafflement and deciding to intervene before she got frustrated and possibly violent, came and sat beside her and whispered details and explanations in her ear as the dinner and egg battle went on. It was still weird, and Laura didn't see what eggs had to do with it, but she hung around, watching. At first Kurt had the most eggs. Then Kitty did. Then Logan and Hank discovered she'd been phasing through furniture to reach eggs. And then Kurt started teleporting to difficult eggs, and all hell broke loose as mutant teenagers used their powers to amass bountiful piles of plastic eggs. Somehow Laura ended up on basket duty, guarding several baskets from sabotage.

Sam occasionally checked back on her to see how she was faring. Finally, it appeared that all the eggs had been found, and exhausted teenagers headed off to the rec room to start assessing their bounties and trading what they didn't want for what they did. Laura didn't join them. she wanted to make sure there weren't any eggs left. The only plausible location she hadn't checked yet was under the head of some mythological deity. Not many people knew it was hollow. She gently lifted the head and peeked under.

There was a roundish green shadow.

She hurriedly lifted the head the rest of the way off the table and set it on the ground. She studied the egg for a minute, then picked it up carefully. It was light, and something was inside of it. A thin line ran horizontally around the middle of the little green egg. Laura recalled how the others had opened theirs- just pulled the halves apart- and tried to open her own. It popped apart, and she saw three little Reese's lying together in one of the halves, as if that egg had been planted specially for her to find.


	2. Halo

I still own nothing. Um, a few explanations. When I got paper and a pencil and really bored, I'd been kicking around this idea in my head for awhile, and in my little happy place, Laura's obsessed with Reese's and roses. And I can't help but notice how Roberto's never noticed, so he's in here too. And Jamie is cool because he's the youngest and he's finally found someone smaller than him (Laura) to goof off around. Just not too much. Oh, yes. And apologies for my typed German accent. I can do Spanish and English, but no German.

* * *

So maybe Prom was like the egg battle? Laura went in search of Sam, her human-ritual-explaining device man. He was playing Halo with Roberto, Kurt (who was losing due to his lack of extra digits), and Jamie. Oh well. They all could help. 

"Hey," she said, and curled up in her favorite chair (that someone had taped a sign reading 'Laura's chair- do not sit' to the back of). "What's Prom?"

The four boys glanced at her. Roberto's soldier got defragged and died.

"Vat's Prom?" Kurt asked. Just making sure.

"Yeah," Laura shifted inher chair. She liked Kurt well enough, and the New Mutants were fine one-on-one, but all four stares at once was unnerving. "What's so special about it?"

Kurt glanced back at the game on the large television (Jamie's soldier was still driving the Warthog, which had just launched itself off the edge of a cliff), then back at Laura, who stared back with her penetrating green eyes.

"Vell, it's veally just a school dance."

"I can't go." Jamie commented unnecessarily.

"It's couples only. None of us guys- except Kurt and Scott- are going. We're having a Halo party." Roberto informed her.

"Okay, but what's with the dresses then? Jean is wearing something very pink and lacy, and I caught Bobby stealing some of my roses yesterday."

Sam fit a piece into an imaginary puzzle. "That's why he had that cast at dinner last night."

"Yeah." Laura had mained another student. Logan wasn't originally going to just let it go, but after her explanation and a promise that she wouldn't mutilate anyone else for awhile, he rolled his eyes and let her get back to her rose garden. Bobby, who learns quickly, started walking down the opposite side of the hall from her and never crossed within thirty feet of Laura's roses again.

Sam's human ritual-explaining device mechanism clicked on. "It's a dress up thing. Everyone gets all spruced up and goes to the school after awhile and dances and talks, and then they go out somewhere and do something."

"Like a thousand-person date that spans the whole city." Roberto added after killing Sam's Halo soldier for the third time in a row without Sam noticing.

"So basically- you know you were just killed three times, right?- this Prom thing is where everyone dresses up like snobby rich people with too much time on their hands and money in their pockets, parade themselves around in a hot smelly gym in the middle of a weekend, and then go do expensive versions of the same things they'd be doing anyway if it was a normal Saturday night. Wow, that sounds fun." she said sarcastically from within her cushiony chair.

"It's not like we have to worry about it," Jamie said to Laura as his soldier fried Kurt's Warthog ("Hey, I vas using zat!") and a large explosion filled both their screens. "We're both homeschooled. It's nice to have someone else around for once."

"You're only twelve anyway, Jamie, so-."

"Oh, and how old are you, Mr. Smarty Pants?" Jamie interrupted, his eyes never leaving the t.v. screen.

"Fifteen." Roberto's soldier was slightly stupid. Laura sat silently and watched the Halo game. Due to the three Stooges' killing each other, Kurt was able to employ his favorite gaming tactic- running around and stealing ammo and weapons, then shooting at his enemies from a safe distance with a rocket launcher. He gradually began winning.

There was a sound in the doorway. "Phone." Logan tossed the phone at Jamie, glanced at Laura to see if she'd massacred anyone yet, and with eyes expressing nothing, left.

"He's so creepy when he sneaks up behind you." Jamie commented, picking up the phone. "Hi, Mom!"

Kurt checked his watch. "I have to go get veady now. Who von? Oh, me. How nice." And with a small triumphant smile, Kurt teleported away. Laura wrinkled her nose at the smell.

"Well, I'll be darned," Sam said, looking at the scores displayed. Kurt's was the highest by a fairly large margin.

Laura grinned (still trying not to breathe). Someday she'd have to show them how to properly engage in warfare.


	3. Sisterly Affection

More explanations. Jean somehow ended up like cartoon Jean to me (unintentional, actually), but when she refers to 'personal reasons', she is alluding to the story that I never finished and finally deleted out of pure frustration about X-23's ruining Hydra. I'm not sure why Laura is being so docile- notice how it took three chapters to acknowledge that she's no longer a weapon- but let's say she's either saving it up or just chilling today.

* * *

"Come here for a minute, Laura!"

Laura winced. She had hoped to clear the bedroom without detection, but Jean Grey, the telepath (she had remembered that too late) wasn't an easy person to be secretive around.

Maybe she needed to be maimed, Laura thought, as she felt herself being dragged into the dreaded bedroom.

"Does my butt look big in this dress?" Kitty asked, straining for a view in the mirror that Rahne had taken up.

"Laura, come sit here for a sec, please." Jean gestured towards a little stool chair in front of a dresser with another mirror. It was way across the room. In order to reach it, Laura would have to walk, dodge, crawl, and elbow her way through four perfumed, hairsprayed, made up, overfessed teenage girls in heels. She took a breath and dove in. Eventually she reappeared on the far side of the room near the stool. She sank onto it feeling grateful for her life. Facing the hyperactive girls, she couldn't help but notice how much of a difference there was between her and them.

They were all beautiful. Jean was tall and smart and intimate in a little black dress, and Kitty's happy energy made her almost glow in a cute yellow gown. Rahne's red hair and pink cheeks were perfect for her pale green number, and Amara's regal personality was brought out by her sandy dress.

And then there was Laura. Plain, angry, violent little Laura, in her oversized t-shirt and too-baggy jeans. Her hair, aside form choppily cut bangs she'd given herself a few weeks ago after her Danger Room sessions had started, was the exact same it had always been- long, fairly thin, and an unattractive shade of mud brown. No, she wasn't ugly, but she was…average looking. That had been a good thing when she was still X-23, but she wasn't that anymore. She was Laura Howlett, clueless mystery relative of Logan's.

"I want to try something. Hold still," Jean said, kneeling down behind Laura and picking up a brush. Laura almost turned around and gutted her where she knelt- but. there was always a 'but' now. In this case, it was because that was a rather pretty dress and it'd be a shame to destroy it. And she was curious about what Jean was doing to her hair.

"How do you like the institute so far?" Jean asked, brushing the almost permanent tangles out of Laura's hair.

"It's…crowded. There are a lot of new things. What do you care?" Laura- the part of her that wasn't enjoying the feeling of her hair being- done something to- was feeling suspicious of an ulterior motive.

"The professor thinks you're doing really well- except for the Bobby thing-,"

"That was his fault for being stupid," Laura interrupted.

"-So we were wondering if you would be interested in trying some public school. Since there's only a month left in school, the professor- sorry, that was a big tangle- thought he could have you enrolled. Dr. McCoy and Ms. Munroe say you're doing really well in their classes."

"Sure," said Laura, "But no thanks. I'm okay here. For now."

_-"We're both homeschooled. It's nice to have someone else around for once."_-

"Besides, I don't think that would be too fair to Jamie." she muttered to herself, remembering what he had said.

"You mean until Logan leaves on one of his excursions again." Jean said, trying to turn the conversation.

"What?" Laura tried to lift her head, but Jean held her hair.

"Stop moving, you'll mess it up. Logan goes off somewhere now and then. Usually after a run in with Sabretooth. He'll disappear for a few weeks, and once we start wondering if he's coming back, he'll be sipping coffee in the kitchen like he was never gone at all."

She looked as though she wanted a reaction, so Laura managed a "Huh."

"Of course, he hasn't gone off on one of his trips since you came here. Even when you were gone for-," she glanced at the other three girls, who weren't paying any attention whatsoever, "personal reasons. He stayed here for you. So you'd have family to fall back on." Jean stopped and stood up. "Done. Take a look."

Laura turned around on the stool and looked in the mirror.

That wasn't her.

Her hair- part of it, around her temples, had been braided and tied with a spare hair twisty behind her head, almost like a wreath of hair framing her hard face. Once-hard f ace. She looked more like a fourteen year old now, instead of a forty year old. It felt sort of nice, too. Laura felt her mouth trying to turn up at the corners. She looked over her shoulder at Jean, who was smiling in an all-knowing big sister kind of way.

"Eh. It's alright." Laura shrugged and stood up. "You talk a lot though."

She walked towards the door and heard Kitty's forlorned cry of "My butt's huge!"

"So take that ridiculous boquet thing off of it," Laura pointed at the bustle . Kitty looked grateful, and started taking it off carefully.

Laura left the stale room, and for the second time in an hour, smiled.


	4. Not Good Enough

I still own nothing. This chapter's more talk, I'm relatively sure the story'll start picking up sometime soon, now that I've figured out where I'm going with it...yeah, that Sam/Laura I mentioned in the original summary? It's not in this chapter either. But it's coming. Oh, is it coming.

* * *

The van pulled out of the Mansion grounds much to the relief of the remaining residents, who promptly stopped waving and went back to whatever they'd been doing before the crazed teenage girls and their prom had taken over their lives. Laura went down to the Danger Room to watch Rogue, who'd been studiously avoiding dresses and the people in them and figured the Danger Room was the best place to do it. Who, aside from Laura and Logan and in some cases Scott, liked being in there?

Laura idled down the cold silvery halls of the basement levels of the mansion in as decent a mood as she was capable of, humming a dirty song Bobby had taught her before she'd maimed him, and pausing now and then to explore a hall she hadn't been down in…a few hours max. But still.

When she entered the observation room, she mentally winced at the room's other occupant, who was watching Rogue down below with a critical eye and almost obsessive attention to detail. Logan. She couldn't slip back out, not now that she'd entered the room.

What had Jean meant when she'd said he left?

"Kid, I know you're there." Logan said without turning around. She sighed and dragged herself up to stand beside him. Rogue launched a sidekick that knocked a military-esque opponent clear across the room. Laura didn't really see it.

"Alright, what's buggin' you now? You're sulking." He paused. "I didn't know you could sulk. Generally you just beat someone up and move on."

Laura hesitated, then turned to glare at Logan dead on. A firm resolve was needed when dealing with Logan, or so she thought.

"Why are you still here?"

That didn't come out right. Logan looked slightly confused under his usual permanent scowl.

"What are you talkin' about, kid?"

Rogue let loose a battle cry that would have made Magneto decide to quit his traitorous ways and take up flower arranging, and dismantled half the Danger Room in one go. Logan watched Laura silently think, and absently pushed the button ending Rogue's session.

Sighing, Laura fiddled with the braids Jean had put in her hair earlier and looked down at the dormant review monitors. "I heard that you used to…go places. You used to leave for awhile and no one would know exactly when you left or when you were coming back. Why'd you stop?"

Logan was silent for a few minutes. "You hear this from Jean?"

Laura blinked. "Yeah. How'd you know?"

He grinned wryly. "That girl's got an agenda. It's best to just ignore her and let her latest craze pass on its own. I got a bike that needs fixin', you wanna help?"

That was as far as Logan's affection went. By helping him fix a bike, he meant sit a minimum of five feet away and talk to him and occasionally get him a drink or a towel. Laura was better at destroying than fixing, but she followed him around silently as he shut down the Danger Room for the night.

"By the way, nice hair," he said with a hint of amusement from the doorway as Laura turned the last of the monitors off and backed up the recording of Rogue's session. She touched her hair. "Jean did it."

"No doubt at the same time she was feedin' you that stuff about me."

"That wasn't feedin', that was tellin' the truth," Rogue commented in her southern drawl as she sauntered up to them in her sweaty uniform and a hoodie with an X on it. "Ah need to work on mah bike some too."

Ten minutes later, the garage door was open and both Logan and Rogue were deep in concentration on their bikes. Laura was bored. She started looking around, and noticed in the far corner of the garage a car that was totaled to the point that Laura couldn't even name the model it originally was. It was surrounded by toolboxes, spare parts, and large metal-bending machines, like it was in surgery.

"What happened to that?" She nodded at the car. Logan slid himself out from under his bike and looked over at the car.

"I found Sabertooth a few days ago. It didn't go well. I'm trying to find parts to salvage and the rest is going to the junkyard."

Sabertooth? Laura had never actually come across the mutant, but she'd heard stories. Bad stories. Stories involving deaths and betrayals…stories much like the ones that circulated around in the black market about an X23…. Laura tried to encourage them so people would leave her alone. But was Logan going to leave?

Her silence must have said something to him, because Rogue put down her wrench and watched quietly as Logan began getting irritated with his clone's unspoken questions.

"Look, I ain't goin' off anywhere anytime soon. I don't trust you to keep your temper that much."

"Or did you just lose Sabertooth and decide to wait until he found you?"

Logan sat up the rest of the way. "Look kid, you're stuck with me. You made that decision when you came to us for help. So deal with it."

"Sometimes it seems like the other way around. I'm stuck with you." Laura got up and stormed off before they could get into a read argument. She paused on the other side of the door from the hall and unclenched her fists. She hadn't realized she'd actually gotten that mad. In the middle of a series of deep breaths with her eyes closed, Laura heard Rogue speaking softly to Logan.

"You're so hard on her."

"She can't go about doing whatever she wants."

"When was she ever allowed to do that? Let the kid live some. She's never going to learn unless she makes some mistakes. Besides, I don't think she's actually lost her temper in at least six hours. She's getting better."

"She's not good enough." Logan said after a few seconds.

Rogue sighed. Well, someone did. Laura was still breathing to herself on the other side of the door, so she wasn't one hundred percent sure who it was.

"Nothing's good enough for you. Go get Sabertooth. X-Men watch out for each other. Or that's what the Professor says."

"You sure?"

Heavy shoes clunked towards the door. Laura looked around desperately, and hid behind a randomly discarded van door just as Rogue entered the hall. She paused and looked around, then turned back to Logan.

"Yeah, he says it all the time," she said absently, studying the van door. She walked over to it as Logan grumbled for a minute.

"Hi, Laura," Rogue said casually, leaning on the windowsill of the door. "Comfy?"

"Not really." She grumbled at the same time Logan yelled "Fine!"

"Looks like you get to see Logan leave after all." She smiled down at Laura, who was cramped between the door and the wall.

"Hooray." She grumbled. "Now let me out."


	5. Leaving

I'm so in over my head. Something's wrong with this chapter, it's not very funny.

Mutants involved in the writing of this chapter- Laura, Sam, Bobby, Jamie, Jean, Rahne, Kitty, Jubilee. Just in case I got confused somewhere in the writing. I wrote this chapter in the hours of 12:30 and 2:00 a.m. this morning, and it's not the best, and the logic, to me, is sort of weak, but IT'S DONE AND THAT'S WHAT FRIGGIN' COUNTS.

So enjoy. I've already started chapter six. There's espionage in chapter 6. Not as much talking.

Oh, yes, and Jean's Phoenix powers are growing. No one knows this yet.

* * *

The next morning, Logan was gone. His room was empty, as though he'd decided to move out. Laura leaned against the doorway, frowning, while behind her Jamie played something violent on Scott's PSP. Of course Logan wouldn't even say goodbye. She blinked. What did it matter if he said goodbye or not? He wasn't her father or anything. If anything, they were like brother and sister, if you saw their genetics, had something to drink the previous night, and a slight squint. 

At least he'd told someone his reason for leaving. According to Rogue, this wasn't a normal practice. He only told someone- Professor Xavier- if there was a chance it could affect the kids at the mansion. Apparently, it did. Storm and Beast were in a meeting with Xavier, and had been for quite some time.

"Are you just going to stand there for much longer or do you plan on coming back the real world soon?" Jamie asked from behind her. "You act like the world ended. He'll come back, you know. Next time Sabertooth gets away."

Laura twitched slightly and idly turned down the hall, Jamie trailing behind her playing his game and muttering to himself now and then.

"I don't really like the real world..." Laura said absently.

A month later, Logan hadn't returned. Even the Professor, if questioned about it, would frown vaguely and only offer small hints of what Logan had left for. Everyone knew why, that was obvious. But why hadn't he returned yet?

And although she hadn't known it was possible, Laura was miserable. Logan was the only one who could stand her constant verbal abuse, the only one she didn't have to be careful around. He'd seen her true colors, and hadn't been repulsed because he came from the same thing. She could identify with him, even if she'd never admit it. The first two weeks or so after Logan had left, Laura would sharply pay attention whenever someone was talking about him, or she'd prowl the nights, checking and rechecking security and the garage. But even after a few weeks she stopped doing that.

She couldn't avoid a nagging suspicion that however long Logan had planned on being gone, even tentatively, a month hadn't been on his list. Not when he was leaving Laura behind.

The last straw was a news feed one night on the six o' clock news. Several of the mansion's students were in the living room, idly arguing about what to watch. A few Jamies had the remote, and they were holding a small contest, seeing who could flip through all five hundred channels the quickest. So far Emo Jamie was winning.

"Today, on-."

"No, Pikachu!"

"-And now we're going to-."

"Mutant called Sabertooth-."

"Wait," Laura cried, "Go back!"

Jamie acquiesced. Jubilee rolled her eyes beside him.

"I hate the news, it's so depressing."

"-Broke into and overpowered the head of the building, gaining access to the government files on many of today's more well-known mutants, including-."

"That's why Logan's not back yet then, isn't it?" Rahne wondered, absently pushing the lamp back down onto the end table beside her. Jean blinked from the recliner against the wall.

"Sorry." She said, blushing slightly. "I'm having some problems with my powers. Again."

Laura ignored her, eyes focused solely on the television.

"It makes sense, if you think about it. Logan went to find Sabertooth, and I guess he did, but Sabertooth also found him and…and I guess it was at this place the reporter's talking about…" she waved vaguely at the television, frowning.

"That, like, doesn't make much sense. You need to work on your logic skills," Kitty commented from the floor, where she'd spread out several piles of homework into priority stacks.

"Unless she means that Logan got caught and is in the building somewhere under Sabertooth's control," Jean pondered.

"Yeah, whatever," Laura said. "I bet he's trapped somehow and can't get out. I need to go save him."

All eyes turned to her in mixed expressions of exasperation, confusion, dismay, and skepticism and several voices voiced those feelings, ending with Jamie's comment: "The Professor would never let any of us go find Sabertooth, you know that!"

"Really?" Laura frowned. "I didn't know that."

Jean stood up. "Okay, first of all, I would like to point out that deliberately going to find Sabertooth, whom even Logan can't defeat, is an extremely stupid idea."

Laura, Kitty, and Rahne pouted, while Bobby, Jamie, Sam, and Jubilee smiled smugly.

"However, if we're going to consider ourselves a family we're going to have to do things like a family, including bailing family members out of bad situations. Besides, the Professor is at a lecture at Harvard. Scott and I are in charge. So I say we go get Logan back."

"You just like him because he bought those pads for you once," Sam complained.

Jean raised her finger to silence him. "Be as it may, I'm interested in helping Laura. Not entirely because she'd likely get stomped on her own. I think if we worked as a team we'd stand a chance at success. And if we can subdue Sabertooth and get Logan free, then we can also get the other mutants he has to safety too."

Now Laura, Kitty, and Rahne smiled while Bobby, Jamie, Sam, and Jubilee pouted.

Rahne stood up. "If ye don't want to go then don't. But I'm in."

Bobby stood up too, right in front of Rahne. "Has it not occurred to anyone yet that we're a bunch of kids? Kitty and Jean are the only actual X-Men in here-."

"Well, technically-." Kitty interrupted.

"No," Bobby interrupted, "We're not X-Men, we're the new recruits, the backups. We've only even been on a handful of missions, and minor ones at that. We don't count. And some of us think that's because we're inexperienced, and that won't change until you at least give us a chance in the field-."

"What the hell do you think this is, a frolic through daisies?" Laura interrupted. "Now shut up. All of you. I don't need help, I've done harder things by myself before. I don't need you."

Jubilee spoke slowly, "It would be easier with more people. Sort of as backup, at least. If not in the middle of everything."

"Yeah, that'd be cool. And we could be distractions for Sabertooth. That way you could get in at least." Jamie pitched in.

"And between Bobby and Jean we'd have enough firepower to hold our own should the need arise," Sam was warming up to the idea. "And Kitty and I wouldn't have a problem if walls got in the way. Maybe this would actually work."

Laura sighed. "I have lost all control of this rescue mission, haven't I?"

"Yep," Jean grinned, then sobered. "Crap, Scott. I forgot about him."

"Oh, is he here?" Jamie asked. "I forgot."

"No, um…go get in my van, I'll distract Scott then come meet you."

"Uniforms?" Sam asked. Jean shook her head.

"No time. Scott would catch on, and you know he wouldn't like the idea. Give me fifteen seconds and then sneak into the garage. Now." Jean sauntered out the door.

The room was silent for a moment, listening to Jean BS to Scott. Their voices faded as they walked away down the hall.

A few more moments passed, and then Bobby cleared his throat. Laura looked at him.

"It's been fifteen seconds," he whispered.

_Okay, go. We're in the kitchen._ Jean thought to them.

The seven teenagers managed to stay relatively quiet as they snuck into the garage, passing Jean lying about needing more pads ("I hope he doesn't remember her period was last week," Kitty whispered to Jubilee, who stifled a giggle as Laura glared at them.). Jean joined them shortly, climbing into the driver's seat and opening the garage door. She frowned for a moment, and closed her eyes.

"Um, this may be a stupid question, but what are you doing? We're um, not moving," Sam asked from the way back row of the van.

"I'm trying to sense…anything. I think if I concentrate I can, I can do a lot of things with my powers that I used to be unable to, and it really increases when the Professor's gone…so be quiet…." Jean muttered, fingers on temples. "…Northwest."

"So how do you figure this?" Laura asked from the shotgun seat.

"Call it a hunch," Jean answered, a strange light fading from her eyes as soon as she opened them.


	6. Road Trip

That didn't take too long...oh, who am I kidding? At least I had a legitimate excuse. School. Fortunately school is over until January so I will hopefully actually write something more than once a month or whatever I'm averaging. This is insane. PsychoJean is fun. I love her Phoenix powers, they make for good quality slapstick

* * *

The van pulled out of the garage and the X-kids got out of Bayville quick enough, considering the city's normal congestion around five and six o' clock traffic time, and they got onto the major westbound interstate.

Jubilee sighed in frustration, turning the map of New York around and around. "I hate this state, there are so many little red interstates everywhere. Even California's not this bad."

"You're holding it upside down, turn it over," Bobby pointed at a thin red line, "That's us. We need to go this way…how long?" The last part was directed at Jean, who was arguing with Laura quietly up front.

"Huh?" She asked.

"How far northwest are we going?" he repeated.

"Oh, um…" she shrugged. "I don't know. Until I get a stronger sense of a specific location. Maybe to the border."

Kitty frowned. "Why is it that everything centered around Logan happens in Canada? How cliché."

"Hey, I don't write these adventures, I just get drawn into going on them," Jean shot back. "Just deal with it."

The van got quiet.

It remained quiet for about four and a half minutes.

"I have to go to the bathroom," Jamie complained.

"Well, you should have went before we left," Jubilee said crossly. She'd been crammed between Rahne, who kept trying to stick her head out the window, and Sam, whose long legs kept taking up her private leg space, in the way back of the van.

"There, like, wasn't exactly time to go before we left. Maybe we should pull into a rest stop for a minute." Kitty tried to stretch her legs without actually moving and gave herself a mild Charlie horse. Bobby and Jamie were almost laying down sprawled out in the middle row of seats.

"I'm good," Bobby shrugged.

"I'm not." Jubilee whined. "There's no room- Rahne, get your butt out of my face- back here."

"It smells funny in here," Rahne said.

"Does anyone have any snacks?" Sam asked hopelessly.

"You all be quiet or I'll keep going." Jean threatened. "There's a rest stop in a mile, can you wait that long?"

"Yeah, I think so," Jamie squeezed his puny legs together.

"Okay then. Problem solved." She glanced at the squished row of mutants in the back. "And when we get back in the car Bobby and Sam are trading seats. Rahne, get back in the car. All the way."

The large green sign the grey van was about to pass had the names of two cities in the U.S. and one in Canada, and none of them were more than seventy miles away.

"Are we there yet?" Rahne asked. Her forehead was pressed against the window as she stared at passing trees with extreme boredom. The mutants were taking turns asking that question. Now it was Laura's turn, to be spoken at her disposal but no more than within five minutes of another person's asking.

Jean slammed on the breaks and swerved off the road onto a little turnoff.

"Yes. We're here."

The kids all looked out the car windows. "Where is here exactly?" Sam wondered. "Everything looks…green."

"At least we're not in Canada," Kitty shrugged. "I, like, can handle only so much stereotyping in one day."

Here turned out to be a gravel path too thin for a van and too faded for casual bikers that passed through the trees and promptly got swallowed in semi-Canadian wilderness. Everything was at least slightly green. Even the scattered rocks had green molds on them. In the distance they could hear a dull roar.

"Waterfall," Rahne muttered. The kids fell out of the van and stretched stiff limbs for a few minutes.

"So," Bobby sighed the sigh of a man not particularly wanting to be where he is. "Not to sound like a spoilsport or anything, but does anyone have any clue where we are?"

Kitty studied the green sign on the other side of the highway facing southbound traffic. "We are…85 miles north of a town called Pinewood."

Jean was zoned out through all of this, standing calmly by the drivers' door of the van. "It's stronger now…I can sense everything except…except that…."

Laura blinked. "So are we there yet?"

"This way," she moved gracefully down the completely inconspicuous gravel path, trailed by confused or irritated teenage mutants.

'This way' led through an increasing amount of foliage on either side of the path that ended in a tall but insubstantial wall of wild plants and saplings. On the other side of said wall was about a hundred yards of pure green lawn interrupted only by four heavily-armed security guard men milling about the premises and 360 degree cameras that weren't even pretending to be subtle.

"How in the world did someone like Sabertooth get this kind of money?" Sam whispered. Laura narrowed her eyes from her vantage point flat on her stomach on the ground peering through trunks of bushes.

"I don't know yet, but we're going to find out. We need to take out the guards and cameras first without being loud."

"Wait, take out?" Jamie muttered from the very back of the group. Several people shushed him.

"Jean, could you-." Laura started, pausing as a mysterious breeze made several large branches break from the tree above them with a crack and float unnoticed towards the nearest guard. One suddenly dropped and with impossible precision neatly broke the guard's radio on his belt into several pieces. It thudded into the ground so hard it barely wobbled.

The second branch made a similar beeline for the man's ammunition belt and gun, destroying both just enough to make a reliable shot impossible should the need arise. It too thudded unnecessarily hard into the ground. The third branch, also the thickest and bluntest, dropped like the very large tree branch it was on to the guard's helmet hard enough to knock him out before harmlessly falling on it's side.

"Remind me to stop playing pranks on Jean in the future," Bobby whispered to Sam, who just nodded mutely.

Another guard, further away, happened to glance towards his guarding companion and let out a shout for the other two.

"One's reaching for the walkie talkie thing!" Rahne exclaimed nervously.

The man's radio flipped itself over in his hand and exploded, stunning the man enough to knock him out at least temporarily. The other two guards found themselves slammed together and left to slump to the ground.

Jean blinked and got up from her crouch behind the bushes.

"Well," she smiled, "That was easy. Maybe another power spurt isn't so bad after all. Now what, L.?"

"Um." Laura said, temporarily at a loss. "Let's um, go inside now and…save…people."

Jean giggled softly and raised one red-sleeved arm, concentrating. All of the camera heads swiveled around to watch other directions without being obviously redirected, but left a clear if not jagged path straight to a small steel door near the far corner of the wall they were facing from their foliage.

"It's getting so easy now," she sighed happily.

"You think she's enjoying this a little too much? Jubilee muttered, wiping dirt off her pants.


	7. Dumb Luck

So...sorry for the semi-long break just as things were getting interesting, but I had to do finals, and then there was Christmas, and then I had to get ready for a trip to visit relatives 800 miles away. When I got to my grandfather's house I discovered they didn't have internet, so what better time to almost finish this long-winded story?

* * *

The door was unlocked. It wasn't originally, but Jubilee, on Laura's directions, blew the keypad while Bobby froze the frame of the door until it cracked enough that a simple slight shove was all it took for the door to swing open inwards.

There were emergency lights on, which made the large storage room shadowy and ominous and much bigger than it actually was. Here and there were large stacks of wooden crates, such as those in any New England warehouse regardless of its usefulness, and the only windows in the room were very high up near the ceiling and were too small to be of any use as far as lighting went anyway.

And then there were three solid doors barely within eyeshot on the far, far wall. None of the smaller doors scattered along the walls to the right or left were steel, and they were labeled. So logically, the path- or paths, possibly- to Logan and whomever else Sabertooth had kidnapped was through those unmarked doors.

"There's no one else in here," Jean stated.

"I think we need to divide into groups." Laura said softly. "I want at least one offensive power and one defensive on each team."

"What's she talking about?" Jamie whispered to Sam.

"People whose powers only affect themselves, like in protection, are defensive. You're one. Um, Kitty is, so is Jubilee. And then there's the offensive-."

"-Like Laura and Jean who can beat the crap out of people with their powers. And make walkie talkies explode."

"…Sure." Sam glanced up at Laura and Jean to see if they'd heard that. They were discussing divisions of mutants instead.

Kitty and Rahne snuck as well as they could down a cold tiled hall in jeans and in Kitty's case, barefoot with her heeled flip flops in one hand.

"This sucks," she muttered under her breath.

"At least we weren't left behind again," Rahne muttered in her Scottish brogue. "Look, you can phase through things, why can't we do that? It'd be faster."

Kitty stopped and blinked. "Why didn't I think- come on." She grabbed Rahne's arm and yanked, throwing the girl off balance as she dashed through the thick gray wall at the end of the corridor. This wall led through another grey hall, which in turn was parallel with another shabbier gray hall.

A loud, piercing siren went off mid-phase, and Kitty almost solidified right there.

She fell out of the fourth or fifth wall in, Rahne crying out behind her, into a hall that actually had doors along the opposite side of it. Some guards cried out too, similar to those guards from outside as far as weaponry and militia getup.

Their guns looked a lot more intimidating from three feet away than they did from thirty yards, and both mutants were acutely aware that Jean wasn't around to randomly combust them. So at the same exact instant for both girls, a new plan was formed.

"Run!" they both screamed, and ran right into what turned out to be a reinforced cell. One of the guards slammed the thick door shut behind them, locking them in. They heard a small click, as though a light switch had been flicked on, but instead of a light, a high-frequency hum filled the room and the teens felt…not ill, not quite lightheaded…but lightheaded was the best way to describe it. Kitty tried to phase, but smacked in the wall and fell on her butt.

"Uh oh," she said slowly.

Rahne glanced up from where she had slid to the floor against a concrete wall.

"What?" she asked glumly, rubbing her head where she'd slammed it.

Kitty threw up her hands in frustration. "I left my shoes in the hall."

"And that's all you can think about right now? We don't have powers. You just body slammed a concrete wall and lost. I don't like cages. This sucks."

"Hey, be quiet for a second." Kitty looked zoned out.

"Excuse me-."

"Shut up, I think I hear something. It's over…over there, by your hand." Rahne impulsively twitched her hand away and they crowded together on their stomachs in front of a tiny slit of a crack in the wall near the bottom.

"Now listen," Kitty whispered.

They did, and heard after a few seconds a faint breathy sound.

"It's probably just the air conditioning or something, if cells have cracks that show what shape the air conditioning is in…." Rahne trailed off again, and listened to what was unmistakably ragged breathing in another room? Cell? They couldn't tell that, but every so often there was a grunt and the sound of a body hitting a wall with a lot of force unsuccessfully. It cursed.

"Logan?!" Kitty screamed hopefully into the crack. The breathing paused, and then emitted a low sigh.

"What are you doing here, half-pint?"

"Oy, I'm here too! Rahne!" Rahne waved even though Logan couldn't see it.

"Talk about dumb luck," he commented furiously. "How are you two alive? Obviously Sabertooth doesn't know you're here yet-."

"Oh, no. At least, we don't think he does." Kitty looked at Rahne, who shrugged helplessly at the absence of her wolfish powers. "Um. We didn't come alone."

"Yeah, we're dumb, but we're not stupid."

"Coulda fooled me," Logan grumbled. "So who's runnin' the show? Laura probably threw a fit when you all tagged along, and if Scott were here…well, no one would be. You'd all still be plannin' in the War Room."

Rahne was feeling along the crack to see how wide it was. "Jean's sort of second-in-command under Laura. She's going psycho again."

"Which one, Laura or Jean?"

Kitty and Rahne paused and looked at each other. "Both, really. Jean made a walkie talkie explode in midair. It was cool. And then she giggled." Rahne said.

"Laura, Jean, you two…who else is here?" Logan almost sounded pained, and Kitty could almost visualize him running one of his large hands through his hair in frustration.

"Bobby, Sam, Jamie, and Jubilee."

"Perfect. Out of a whole mansion of X-Men, you picked the least experienced to fight Sabertooth?"

Kitty smiled desperately, but only Rahne could see it. "And save whoever else is trapped here."

"Well, it looks like you're failing. There's no way out of these cells, I've been trying for awhile. So we're just gonna have to hope the rest of your little rescue mission doesn't flop."

They heard him sit down by the wall with the crack, and Kitty and Rahne leaned against their side of the wall, thoroughly discouraged.

"We're only inexperienced because we never get to do anything." Rahne mumbled, her head resting on her folded up legs. "Did you expect anything else?"

Kitty didn't say anything, only hoped with every ounce of spirit in her that Jean and Bobby's groups were faring better.


	8. Homemade Mutant Grenades

Ahh, chapter eight. It's nice to see you here, if my horrible execution of plot hasn't driven you away. This is a short chapter, because it's not necessary to make it any longer. I offer my congratulations and sincere gratitude for making it this far, and I shall eat a cookie in your honor! Munch! Okay, anyway…

* * *

Bobby's group, which consisted of himself, Jubilee, and Jamie, was not in fact faring any better. They were the only group without an experienced X-Men with them, and they hadn't really had any training themselves that would aid them as X-Men in the future, so decisions were argued over and analyzed and cross-analyzed and then discarded altogether, and this had happened enough that Bobby was annoyed with Jubilee, Jubilee was about ready to murder Bobby, and Jamie was extremely bored in general.

In ten minutes they'd barely made it down the first hall, and unintentionally made enough noise that two guards in the adjoining hall had silently but efficiently gotten into position on either side of the corners and were ready to ambush the children just as they reached the perpendicular hall.

"I still have to go to the bathroom," Jamie said absently, rubbing his eyes. He'd woken up from a mental nap moments before. Jubilee rolled her own brown eyes and was about to say something, but got distracted. Bobby glanced at her, then cuffed Jamie's ear.

"You should have went before we left." He said. Jamie stomped his foot on the tile in self-righteousness.

"I tried to, you all wouldn't let me! You said we had to go! Well, we're here and I have to pee!" he whined.

"Hey, um, guys?" Jubilee waved an arm vaguely between the boys' faces. "Why is the wall throwing a shadow? Generally, I thought, straight walls don't have lumpy shadows. But that may have changed."

Behind the wall, out of bodily sight of the three teenagers, one of the guards slapped his helmeted forehead. Accursed florescent lighting. It threw twelve shadows instead of just one. The other one made a rude gesture at him with his armored gloved hand, then resumed position.

"Hey, yeah…hey, I've got a plan."

Jamie and Jubilee groaned.

"No, here…" he yanked them both into a small huddle by their collars and whispered enthusiastically, then they all casually broke apart and idly meandered up the corridor. Jamie even managed to whistle a soft tune. The guards mentally counted down to each other and jumped in the way, guns pointed at the dozen teenagers- dozen?

"Hi!" nine identical Jamies said perkily, and then swarmed the guards enthusiastically, messing up their ammo and radio and even tossing one of the guards' guns a bit away before being reabsorbed into the original Jamie.

"Jubes, now!" Bobby formed several baseball-sized ice balls and tossed them to Jubilee one by one, who charged them up and threw them at the guards, where they exploded and large chunks of ice slammed with explosive force into the guards. The first exploding iceball was enough to give the guards a headache, the second made one of them curse out loud and the other drop his semi-automatic and clutch his helmet in pain, and the third iceball knocked them out.

The three teens stood there for a minute, frozen in position, as silence filled the halls. Bobby still had one arm out from his light tosses to Jubilee. Jamie was awkwardly leaning against one wall from the effort of duplicating himself nine times and reabsorbing them all simultaneously completely under his conscious control for the first time. Jubilee was still in a pitcher's pose from chucking their homemade mutant grenades at strangers.

And then as one, they all began breathing again.

"Did you see that? I did it! I finally did it right!" Jamie was practically jumping up and down with joy at his sudden control over his powers. Jubilee smiled in relief.

"Same here, I can't believe I didn't screw that up."

"But I did it! I made more of me on purpose!" he paused suddenly, and then grinned evilly. "The world shall never be the same."

"So this is great and all- by the way, you throw awesome for a girl, Jubes- but we're sort of on a rescue mission. Let's go…rescue." Bobby was grinning despite his words.

"Sure thing, Iceman." Jubilee smiled. And then one of their guards regained consciousness and pressed a button on his belt before any of the three could stop them. A loud screeching alarm filled the air, and the New Recruits ran down the adjoining hall as fast as their legs could carry them to get away before more guards showed up, all bravado gone.


	9. Busting

I've got a few things in here that I didn't make up, and I'd like to point out what they are and where I got them. First: Jean blowing the door across the hall. That's from X3: The Last Stand. Second: "I've never done this before." That may or may not be paraphrased (my comic books are about 800 miles away right now, at my house. I'm at my grandmothers, without internet, which is why I'm finishing this so rapidly) from the New X-Men Academy X (or whatever it's called now) comics. Cessily Kincaid says it as she's about to attack Josh Foley. In the…first one? Sixth? I buy the collections. But it's the first volume. Whatever. So those aren't mine either. Now you know.

* * *

Sam Guthrie followed Jean and Laura's brisk pace wondering vaguely what he was doing with them. Surely Bobby or Kitty should be here, and he should be elsewhere in another group. He hadn't been needed yet anyway. Jean and Laura had taken care of what few guards they had come across with ease while he just stood stupidly around waiting for them to finish so they could move on closer to Sabertooth.

When the alarm had started, he was the only one who jumped. Laura'd had too much training to be easily alarmed by...well, by alarms, and Jean was off in Jean-world again, where telepathy was merely a side effect of her powers and the mortal realms were made of nothing more permanent than sand. It made Sam nervous, a little. Jean had never made him nervous like that before. Rogue made him nervous. Not Jean. But at least Rogue showed emotion. The redheaded leader of the X-Men had a blank face, even when attacked at gunpoint. Sam didn't like it. It was creepy.

Even Sabertooth showed emotion. It was the sort of emotion that made you want to go kill yourself rather than stay in his company, but at least it was something. He checked his digital watch out of curiosity. It was nine at night on the dot. Andy Griffith reruns started at nine, and Sam wished heartily that he could be back at the mansion on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and Laura sitting in her armchair grumpily demanding he explain what was going on again, while random fights could be heard through the ceiling.

Unfortunately though, that wasn't the case. He was in a strange hall in a strange building in a part of New York he'd never been to, missing his favorite show and long missing the dinner every mutant present had missed, thanks to the six o' clock news….

"You okay back there?" Laura asked from in front of him.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just um, thinking."

"About?" she fell into step with him as Jean led the way down a hall in a dream-state that almost made her look like she was glowing. Or maybe it was just the cheap lighting.

Laura glanced at Jean, whom Sam was still eyeing warily. "She's um…pretty out of it, but as long as part of Jean is still in there we're okay. There's been a slight change in plan though. You get to do something after all. Apparently the blank spots Jean's been sensing are power-canceling cells, because she can sense things anyway if she's close enough- hey, don't ask me- and Logan's in one, and Kitty and Rahne are in another. The other kidnapped mutants can wait, but we need our own. So you need to go bust them out."

"Bust them out?" Sam frowned.

Laura nodded. "Literally. It's all concrete walls here and there won't be any unlocked doors."

"But what if I bust in and my powers stop working?"

She looked at him like he was an idiot, and once he thought about that question to himself he felt like an idiot. "Then it'll be a good thing there will be a giant hole in the wall. We're really close to Sabertooth now, Jean says, and I'd rather you not get killed so early in life. So get Logan out so he can help me."

"But still…'bust'." He almost smiled, but didn't quite dare, at her choice of vocabulary.

They paused for a second.

"Well? Go!" Laura said, then turned quickly and walked off to rejoin Jean, who hadn't waited. Sam hesitated, and Jean gave him a mental map of where to go, and with a heavy heart Sam set off.

Kitty and Rahne were almost beside themselves with nerves. What was taking so long? How come neither of them had been rescued? And why did no one wear watches anymore?

Rahne had been pacing. She really didn't like cages- or cells, or anything with a floor, four walls, a ceiling, and a heavy door that discouraged thoughts of independence- and Kitty's occasional hopeful mutters weren't helping. "I'm sure someone will find us," is only so helpful as long as the right people find us, Rahne thought. The thought of what Sabertooth could do to them if he found them made her want to go throw up. Kitty wasn't as imaginative as her though, but in this scenario that was a very good thing. Gradually, Kitty's hopeful murmurs and Logan's occasional comment began to calm Rahne down enough to get her to sit beside Kitty again, in the corner.

There was a polite knock on Logan's door that the girls didn't hear through the crack.

"D'you seriously expect me to ask who it is?" he said gruffly. The girls shifted, but remained quiet. No need to let whoever it was know that two rooms were occupied.

"Um, please find a corner and get in it, I'm supposed to bust you out." Sam's Kentucky accent sounded slightly muffled through the foot-thick door, but it's message was clear enough: move or get hurt. In the hall, Sam took a deep breath and backed up until he was flat against the far wall. He absently kicked Kitty's flip flop heels out of his way, and narrowed his eyes. He had ten feet to completely destroy a foot-thick wall, if what the mental map Jean projected to him was correct. This was going to be hard.

Not above Cannonball though. He shoved off the wall and punched with both hands through the wall from midair in one blurred motion. The wall wasn't even a problem. The following wall took him out though, since the power-canceling aspect of the cells weren't fazed by the destruction.

"Ow?" he mumbled, dazed, from a pile of broken concrete. Logan looked slightly impressed for a second, until Sam told him- slurring slightly from the hit- what Laura told him, and gave him directions to where they'd left him. Then Logan frowned and sprinted away, claws out.

"Hey, Sam! What about us?!" Kitty called from a crack in the floor. Sam stood up after a few tries.

"I think I'll just try the door this time." He said a little clearer than before, and walked in a relatively straight line back into the hall and cannonballed through the door, managing to stop before knocking himself silly again against the wall. Rahne applauded joyfully and Kitty ran into the hall crying out about her beloved shoes.

Laura sniffed. She could smell him now, which meant he knew they were there as well. As if the siren hadn't been enough of a clue. She had added beating up whoever set off the alarm to her to do list, should she manage to walk out of this in one piece.

Before she could really decide how, he walked around the far corner, grinning in a not remotely funny way. Laura unsheathed her claws but kept her foot blades concealed as a secret weapon, as was routine for her. Had been routine for her. A small nagging voice that hadn't been there before- a conscious, Sam had called it…was it just last week?- wondered if weeks of living in a mansion had softened her. X-23 could probably have taken Sabertooth if she'd really tried- could Laura? And even so, she hadn't been able to work on her hand-to-hand much since Logan was the only one who'd heal- would that matter? And Sabertooth probably hadn't lost sleep over anyone lately…Laura banished the silly little voice back where it came from, but it was too late. Doubt had sowed a little garden in her mind.

And stupid Sabertooth knew it just looking at her. And she knew that he knew but it didn't matter in the slightest because they both knew who was going to win this fight.

Oh well, Laura's conscious thought, at least Sam's not going to die today. Or the rest of them, I guess. I wonder where Logan is?

Sabertooth attacked faster than she would have expected from someone as large and heavy as him, which threw her off guard and made her almost miss her block and counterattack. The fight was on.

About a dozen yards back, Jean had gotten distracted monitoring all the mutants around her, and had missed the guard right behind her, who had roughly covered her mouth and dragged her through a doorway while another guard shut and locked the door, cackling. Yes, cackling. Badly, too. Laura wasn't covered! She had to get back out there. Jean saw someone dressed corporately with a needle gun approaching her slowly.

"Now, this shouldn't hurt for long. But then, I wouldn't know, would I? I don't test on myself." The man laughed pleasantly. "Can't have you ruining my plans, not after I've invested so much money in this."

Jean bit the hand over her mouth, and took the opportunity to ask a question.

"So all this- kidnapping mutants, hiring Sabertooth as the force, all of this…testing. You're behind all of it?"

The man grinned slightly less amicably. "Yes. I am."

"These mutants- these people- are in pain. And you don't care." Jean's eyes started growing darker. The man didn't notice.

People- mutants- were in pain. Jean was a telepath, and they were crying out to her. Her. Somehow they knew she knew what they were going through, and she was their only hope to end the pain. And this man was the cause. Not Sabertooth. He was a pawn too. He deserved to die, but for once he wasn't the man behind the scenes. He wasn't that smart, Sabertooth was only violence, and they'd all forgotten that. It always came down to a man in a suit when you peeled the layers away. And the man in the suit was laughing. The tortured mutants cried out all that louder-

"Yes. You're exactly right. I don't care. And you are the only person to know this. Well, for about ten seconds. Now hold still." He advanced.

Jean had been struggling mildly throughout all of this, physically and mentally, but calmed down in mock defeat as her eyes started turning dark. "I've never done this before," she whispered, and the light flickered for a few seconds in a several-mile radius. Then the man stiffened.

The poison gun fell out of his hand, and almost gracefully, he fell over on top of it, dead. The guard by the door fell next, and then the one holding Jean. They weren't dead, but they weren't going to wake up. Jean stood up the rest of the way and brushed what little dirt there was off her black skirt. She glanced at the door and it exploded outwards, rebounding off the far wall just in time for Logan to fly by, followed closely by Sam, Kitty, and Rahne in her wolf form.


	10. Almost

The End

This is almost it, one more chapter! YES!!! 5173 words, four chapters, in one sitting. Holy freaking crap my hands do hurt.

* * *

More guards were pouring into the hall and surrounding rooms, and word was getting around that their boss was dead and their second-in-command was in a mob fight, and chaos reigned. Jean was on a role, knocking people out with mere glances. No more deaths, no more comas. Just unconsciousness now. Rahne was wreaking havoc on ankles with her sharp wolf teeth, and Kitty was almost permanently phasing through one person while elbowing or kicking another. On the far end of the hall, more guards were preoccupied with Bobby and Jubilee's ice grenades, and Jamies were everywhere tripping people up and building a small armory of weapons and ammo in the only broom closet on this side of the building. Every time one of his clones looked as though it was in danger, it'd be reabsorbed and a new one would appear somewhere else. The real Jamie was hiding behind a few unconscious guards, slowly growing pale with effort and concentration but not letting up.

Everybody was at least beginning to look that way. Sabertooth had to contend with not just Logan, but his clone as well, and it was beginning to show. Laura herself wouldn't have stood a chance, but with Logan she was doing fairly well, slicing here, blocking there, getting in for a cheap shot now and then. But even Logan's distractions couldn't help her when she missed a block and got a nasty gash across the stomach. Then she was down to one clawed hand and her feet, while the other hugged her midsection in an attempt to stop the bleeding.

Sam had disappeared again, and was busting other captive mutants free. Fortunately, there were only a few of them. The man in the suit's experiments had only just begun, apparently. But the victims there were weren't quite in the best condition, not having Logan's healing powers. Sam flew them into the woods and went back to look for more.

The sound of sirens from outside the warehouse began faintly in the distance, and started growing. With the valleys and hills the way they were, the faint sound of sirens meant they were actually still miles away, but Jean sensed it and spread a mental message to get out of the warehouse and back to the van. All except Laura and Logan complied, but she knew they'd get out in time so she left anyway, keeping a mental eye on them. Sabertooth was finally losing. When she thought it was safe enough, which was about the time the new mutants, Kitty, and she reached the line of shrubbery they'd snuck through only half an hour before, Jean peeked through Laura's eyes at the scene.

Logan was tying a bleeding, unconscious Sabertooth to a door with someone's belt while Laura kneeled and took deep breaths, both arms hugging herself.

"Told ya' you'd do something stupid while I was gone."

She glanced up, eyes cloudy from fatigue and some really good hits and cuts from Sabertooth other than the one that ripped up her midsection. Logan frowned skeptically.

"Ya' look like crap, kid. Let's go." He picked her up and started running in the opposite direction from the highway and the X-Van, where his motorcycle had been hidden for several weeks in a small dry nook between two large trees in the woods.

Jean's powers faded out as fatigue started to settle in, and she started the X-Van as mutants were still piling in, and as soon as the door was shut she hit the gas and did a U-ie in the road, following another van southbound as everyone found a seat.

"All here?" she panted, no trace of SuperJean or extraordinary psychic powers in evidence for once.

"Yeah?" Kitty glanced around. Bobby had dragged Jamie half-unconscious to the van, but as an unspoken agreement everyone had let him sleep. He had defied all of their expectations by amazing amounts. Kitty hoped that that would factor in when the Professor decided how grounded they all were.

"I- I think so," She panted back. Most of the car was already asleep, and Jean was left to battle exhaustion on her own on the long drive home. The long row of police cars that passed about a mile down the road didn't even look twice at her and the black van. That was good.

The mansion was in an uproar when, at 10:15, a little over four hours after the rescue mission started, Jean pulled the van through the mansion gates. The Professor was even waiting by the driveway, so Jean parked right there and almost fell out of the car. Slowly, exhausted mutants tumbled out. Bobby and Sam dragged Jamie, who was still asleep. Jubilee was walking but her eyes were closed.

"I saw what happened- what the police are saying happened- on the news just now. Fortunately, none of the X-Men are suspected despite powerful evidence to the contrary." The Professor, who had been set on a stern lecture and delivering of punishment, saw the state his students were in- unscathed, not even very depressed, just dirty and tired and hungry- and revised his list of actions. "And tomorrow morning over breakfast we will all discuss your actions and what to do about it. But for now, go take showers and get a snack and go to bed."

Jean hesitated as the slow exodus to the showers began, and then walked over to the Professor. "I-."

"I know. We'll discuss it in the morning."

She didn't look very relieved, but was saved by Logan pulling up on his motorbike with Laura squeezed on right in front of him.

"Go to the med lab, kid. Now."

She stumbled off the bike, hands still covering her stomach, and almost fell, but Jean rushed over to help. "I'll, um, make sure she gets there. Come on, Laura."

Logan stretched stiffly and sighed as he got off his bike and stood by the professor as the new mutants passed by their obedient peers. There was almost palpable tension and accusations in the air between the rescue mission mutants and the obedient clueless mutants, especially the new mutants who didn't get to go. Where were you? What happened? Even the Professor was worried, what did you do? Why didn't you let me come?

"Take it easy, Chuck. They did a pretty good job, all things considered. Not bad for their first real mission. And Laura worked with a team." The last part was said with almost fatherly pride.

Xavier smiled. "Yes, I suppose so. It could have ended worse, though, and that's what I intend to demonstrate. Jean allowed me in her mind for a minute and I saw all that happened on their mission."

"So it's officially a mission?"

"I believe so," Xavier began rolling back towards the stairs to the front door with Logan walking beside him. "And I think part of Bobby, Jubilee, Rahne, and Sam's training will be with the X-Men. They showed quite a bit more initiative and teamwork than I expected."

"And the others?"

"As I said, we will worry about everything in the morning, Logan. Sleep well." Xavier rolled up a ramp and in the general direction of his rooms.


	11. Punishment

I didn't dream I'd get this far- until a few nights ago, when I did in fact dream that, go figure- but here I am…I'm quite pleased with myself. What an adventure. I'm going to feel so lost for a few minutes without this story looming over me. I guess then I'll go back and start one of the stories I drudged up from one of my desk drawers a few day ago.

* * *

"This…sucks…." Jubilee gasped as she clutched her head where a floating robotic beach ball with stingers had tried to remove her brain through her skull. Or that's how it felt. "Why doesn't Jamie have to do this?"

"He's too- watch out!" Rogue ducked as a killer beach ball ground itself into the wall where her head had been seconds before, and then fell, broken, to the ground. She stood up and flicked her hair out of her face. "He's too young. And this is not a punishment. Not entirely." Up in the control room, Scott pressed a button, ending the session much to the present new mutants and X-Men's relief.

"Not bad, trainees. Meet up here in five minutes to review your session."

"I think the worst part of all of this is that Scott's in charge. At least Kurt and Hank make it fun." Bobby muttered just loud enough for the other mutants on the floor of the Danger Room to hear.

"Zat's ze point, Bobby. Vas your mission fun a few days ago?" Kurt teleported into the control room.

Bobby paused. "It was at first, but then…not really."

"At least we didn't get creamed then." Rahne muttered mid-transformation.

"And who, like, says 'trainees' anymore?" Kitty grumbled as the elevator doors opened in the silvery hall outside the entrance to the Danger Room. "Hurry up."

The mutants piled into the elevator and met Scott and Kurt in time to start learning what they could have done better from the X-Men themselves.

Laura was idly trimming roses in the back yard, her hair in a poorly done loose ponytail to keep it more or less out of her face. It was sunny and warm outside, and the pleasant weather reflected Laura's mood. Jean idled up, still slightly upset over her discussion with the Professor that morning, as evidenced by a small frown playing about her lips.

"How goes it on your end?" she asked Laura wryly, stopping to study the roses. They were quite healthy, and almost as good as if Ororo's weather powers had been used instead of more mundane methods of plant rearing. She reached out and touched a rosebud gently, seemingly intent on studying it. Laura glanced up at her from a crouch where she'd been mercilessly hacking and pulling all plants that weren't supposed to be growing in that bed.

"Which part? Logan's sending mixed messages, which isn't really anything new but he'll do something really neat and then jump all over me. Won't even let me out of his sight." True enough, Logan was sprawled in a lawn chair by the pool pretending to watch some of the students swim and reading a paper. "And the Professor knows everything but speaks of none of it. Stupid kids are trying to act like we're all friends now just because we all got beat up together."

Jean looked at something over her shoulder, distracted by something someone did in the pool, but turned back to Laura.

"Well, that's better than the looks I'm getting. Scott's still not speaking to me, by the way. Every time I try to ask him what's up he'll mutter something and go hide in the X-Jet."

"Oh, I bet he's just pissed because he didn't get to come along."

Jean laughed gently. "Yeah…that's probably exactly it. And then the Professor's acting very strangely around me. It's like he doubts me or something. I haven't had a Danger Room session in days…I don't know. At least the headaches are gone now. And nothing's randomly floating around any more."

Logan absently pulled the small table floating near him back to the ground and went back to eavesdropping- sorry, reading, and watching out for the safety of the resident mutants intently.

"And as for Logan, I'm sure it'll work out. Both of you are relatively new at this family thing, so you're going to flop now and then. Don't worry, it'll work out." She paused. "It's time for lunch."

Laura stood up, wiping the exposed claws on her right hand on the bottom of her shirt before resheathing them, and critiqued her handiwork. Deciding the roses looked fine, she turned to follow the exodus to the kitchen for food, but paused when Logan didn't move and gave her a very pointed expression.

"Save me a seat," she asked Jean, who nodded, glanced at Logan, and walked off gracefully.

"So," she meandered over to Logan in her dirty jeans and oversized t-shirt. "What do you want?" It wasn't really a question.

Logan calmly folded up his newspaper and pulled the small table back to the ground again so he could set the paper on it. "Mixed messages, huh?"

She was lost before they'd even started. Logan noticed.

"What sort of mixed messages do I send?" he leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees and studying his clone.

"Mixed messages, like…like when you don't think I'm looking while I'm doing something and you smile, but once I do, or do it wrong, you jump all over me. Or when I wreak havoc on someone who deserves it-" Bobby and the rosebush incident a few months before came to mind "-and you bust an artery yelling at me and then laugh when I leave."

He stood up and glanced around, heading towards the back door. Laura fell into step beside him.

"You laugh," she hissed accusingly, green eyes narrowed. Logan looked like he was about to smile as they turned down the hall that led to the kitchen.

"I was about to say that you deserve it, but after whatever that was just now that would be a lie. You have problems."

"Oh- I have problems! I am not the only problem-haver in this mansion. Look in a mirror! Or look at me and think of yourself. We are both very screwed up people!"

"Exactly," Logan said as they turned into the overcrowded kitchen. Laura blinked and paused long enough to get soundly slammed into by a half-exhausted Sam with a peanut butter sandwich, smearing it all over her and getting plant soil all over him. She decked him upside the head, which made him fall into Kitty, who was innocently picking the bacon out of her BLT, who in turn fell into someone else, and everyone started arguing or falling into the mess created…and life continued.


End file.
